gold rush [the wilds, toni shalifoe]

chapter 2

Day One

Everyone had taken a bit of time to themselves after Dot managed to get Jeanette breathing and on her feet again. Toni and Martha had mostly sat themselves at the side of the group, talking in hushed whispers and promises of how they were going to get through this. Fatin was gradually coming out of her state of shock, while the twins were mostly silent with the occasional bicker between themselves. Jeanette and Leah had been talking between themselves with Shelby was wandering around the beach and collecting up any resources she could find.

Dot had taken it upon herself to attempt to wrap up Hunter's scraped knee. The girl had protested at first which the other Texan had suspected would happen since she was so against letting anyone touch her at all, but after a little coaxing from the girl who had roamed the same school hallways as her, Hunter allowed her to rip a little bit of her shirt and work on making sure that her bleeding knee was covered up and protected from infection.

Dot only knew what she had heard in rumours and conversations about the blonde cheerleader that sat in silence, almost shaking as Dot tried to slowly wrap her knee up. It was pretty obvious that human contact made the girl uncomfortable - something that intrigued Dot since she'd been pretty public with her displays of affection with her ex-boyfriend, Riley Black. She knew a lot more about Riley Black than she wished to know, and she was well aware that the school's star quarterback liked to get high more than her usual customer did.

She also knew all of the rumours that Hunter was likely to be demoted from head cheerleader any day soon since she had started to sit out their stunting routines, no longer wishing to be at the top of the pyramid and often freaking out the times that she did take part. There were lots of rumours about Hunter Boyd, and Dot wasn't sure that most of them fit the description of the girl that sat in front of her.

"It doesn't look that serious," Dot broke their silence, noticing the slight tense in Hunter's fingers against the sand as she looked at how close the other girl was sitting to her. Dot scooted back pretty quickly, trying to make her feel a little more comfortable in her presence. "I've wrapped it for now just to try and keep, like, sand and stuff out of it but it should heal up pretty quickly."

Hunter nodded, closing her eyes for a moment as she tried to get her heart-rate to slow down. She opened her eyes again after a moment as the group all started to form in a loose circle on the rocks, noticing that Leah had been staring at her intently from across the circle. Hunter half her eye contact for a moment, a little unnerved before looking back down at her hands in anxiousness. 

"Hey, does anyone have a phone?" Rachel yelled out, interrupting everyone's conversations as she rose to her feet to stand before them all. Hunter looked up breifly before looking back at her hands, fiddling with the leather bracelet that was strapped around her wrist. She didn't care about surviving on this island, she just wanted Hudson to be with her.

"Don't you think we would have said something if we did?" Toni asked sarcastically as she scowled across at the diver from where she was sitting between Martha and Hunter who subconciously had spaced herself a little away from the rest of them.

"I'm not even sure how many bars we'd get out here," Dot said, shooting down Rachel's idea. She had watched too many survival shows to get her hopes up about the chances of calling someone to save them.

"I'm just trying to think of lifelines, all right?" Rachel snapped, causing Hunter to look up and share a glance with Toni who was studying the blonde girl. Hunter held the glance, the same way she had done with Leah before once again returning to fiddling with her bracelet. "They're gonna find us, but we can't be stupid."

"We should make a big-ass help sign, like in that movie 28 Days Later," Dot partially joked, partially seriously suggested. Hunter was slightly aware of the film she was talking about as Hudson had been huge on his survival tv shows and movies too.